When Siam faced the world: Transnational relations and the Thai modernizing state, 1855-1932

This dissertation is a historically grounded sociological inquiry into the transformation of the Thai state under the global influences from the late 19th to early 20th century. Using a comparative case study, it argues that transnationalism is the empirical and theoretical field that provides better answers for studying the Thai state as it encountered the world in this period. By analyzing how transnational relations shape the Thai modernizing state, this dissertation makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to this burgeoning area of sociology.;The three cases touch upon three forms and layers of transnational relations. The first case analyzes the many ways in which the Thai elite pragmatically staked their claim in the world arena according to their intent to make Thailand modern, civilized, and in line with the global standards first by becoming the transnational cosmopolitan elite and later by implementing their modernizing strategies they learned from the world in Thailand. The analysis includes the royal trips abroad, Thailand's participation in the World's Fair, and the abolition of the traditional institution of bondage and slavery. The second case traces the formation of imperial forestry back to its origin in the British Empire by teasing out how trans-border practices shaped the transfer of the institutions of forestry from the British colonies (India and Burma) and the consolidation of the Royal Forest Department (RFD) in Thailand. The analysis focuses on the struggles of the men-on-the-spots (timber merchants and imperial scientists) and the modernizing state as the process unfolded in the frontier. The third case looks beyond the West to the overseas Chinese transnational networks in Asia Pacific as the non-western agents of global connection by scrutinizing the Thai state strategies for capturing the flows of this transnational force to help realize their modernizing invention. The analysis is revolved around the two cases: the Chinese migrant labor in central Thailand and the Chinese tin-mining dynasty in the Malay Peninsula (southern Thailand).;This dissertation engages with a theoretical problem: the distinction between global and local. Deeply rooted in the social sciences, such distinction reflects the everlasting onto-epistemological divide in the literature. On the one hand, methodological nationalism and causal scientism are the two major social scientific conventions responsible for the perpetuation of such binary through rigid operationalization that produces units of analysis and variables. On the other hand, relatively recent theoretical developments such as world-systems analysis (global capitalism), world society theory (diffusionism), and cultural globalization, have further widened the onto-epistemological gap between the global and local distinction. Through the comparative case study, this dissertation proposes a solution by analyzing transnational relations that connect the global and local. This significant area of sociology has yet to be systematically developed. Nonetheless, theoretical trends in sociological relationalism such as social network, actor-network and field theories represent some promising trajectories down this path to transcend the global-local bifurcation.